Edge | Paige Bromby

Necessary Arts Collective
16 hours ago
3 min read

Exhibiting from November 4 to December 2, 2025

"I think about the vast sky, of the compost pile we stash along the laneway, I think about the new woodpile and butterfly season. But looking at those two-day lilies that have found a home amongst the buckthorn, goldenrod and wild roses, I think mostly about a story my mom tells. The one about her cousin stopping by the farm on his bike - and picking a bouquet of lilies from the garden bed for his date. These stories help build the memory of this place - shaping my relationship with the land along with my own memories, photos and my current experiences there. But having other people's memories in your brain can also challenge and contradict your understanding or experience of a place.

I often contemplate this edge between two ways of knowing a place - comparing it often to the edge of the laneway, separating this wild corridor from acres of plowed fields. As I construct visualizations of these familial places in paint, working from a photograph, I have been recently interested in the difference between a physical place and the mental map - a memory palace of sorts that stores not just my own memories but also stories and memories from friends and family. Those false memories can fill up a place until it has more substance as a memory than as a physical place.

Where was this cousin biking from? He didn’t live in town - where was he biking for a date on this rural farm road? I’m likely misremembering this memory that is not even my own. It’s a silly little story that has almost no plot and is just a charming memory of one of the many summers spent here. He appears and leaves just as this story appears in my consciousness of place - a blip on the loose timeline in my head.

I am curious about the many lives of a landscape. How those lives and interactions change through the seasons (of the year, of my life and others’ lives). These places shift and change with the passing of time just as our relationship, use and attention to them shifts."

About the Artist

Paige Bromby is a painter and cultural administrator based in Fergus, Ontario, She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from the University of Guelph (2020).

The subject of Paige’s work is often her own home and garden, or the farm where her grandfather grew up - now a slowly disintegrating acreage where she observes a slow and steady rewilding.

Working primarily in painting, Paige explores her relationship to natural spaces in a digital age. She is interested in how familial spaces appear through her own interactions within them, through a digital archive and as recorded and memorialized in paint. The many lives of a landscape - how those lives and interactions change through the seasons of nature and life.

She maintains her painting practice while continuing her work in community arts, facilitating a local critique night, working for various arts/cultural organizations and co-founding an artist mentorship program for artists with developmental disabilities.

Available Work

Laneway Lilies & False Memories #1

Oil paint on canvas, 2025, 41”x52”

$1860.00

Purchase this work!

Laneway Lilies & False Memories #2

Oil paint on canvas, 2025, 41”x52”

$1860.00

Purchase this work!

Laneway Lilies & False Memories #3

Oil paint on canvas, 2025, 41”x52”

$1860.00